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The School of Public Health has its origins in the Department of Hygiene, which pioneered much of California's start of the 20th century public health endeavors.[7] It was Karl F. Meyer, however, whose compelling 1930s Public Health curriculum demonstrated a pressing need for a school devoted to the study and practice of public health.[1] Local professional leaders, including Lawrence Arnstein, Ford Rigby, and William Sheppard, used the momentum set in motion by this curriculum to successfully appeal the California State Legislature to create such a school. The result was AB515, signed into law by Governor Earl Warren in 1943, which appropriated funds for a school of public health at the University of California.[1] Shortly thereafter, in 1944, the UC Berkeley School of Public Health held its first commencement. It was accredited by the American Public Health Association two years later, becoming the only accredited school of public health west of the Mississippi River.[8]

In 1955, the school was relocated to be closer to the state health department; Earl Warren Hall was dedicated by Clark Kerr as the new home of the School of Public Health.[8] The baccalaureate degree program continued, but the school began to devote much of its resources to graduate training. At this point, graduate enrollment hovered near 100 students. It soon trebled to 335 students in the mid-1960s, with an annual conferment of around 150 degrees.[1]

Key laboratories in the School of Public Health during the middle of the century were the Naval Biological Laboratory, which focused primarily on aerobiology and related microbial research, and the Sanitary Engineering Research Laboratory which, maintained with the UC Berkeley College of Engineering, pioneered inquiry in the Environmental Health Sciences.[1] The school also played a direct role in community health for years, working with the unified school district, Visiting Nurse Association, and city to provide health services to the Berkeley community through the Berkeley Unified Health Plan.[1]

The most recent (2010) National Research Council Rankings, widely considered the authority on ranking US doctoral programs, identified UC Berkeley as the university with the highest number of programs in the top-five in their field, the highest number of programs in the top-ten in their field, and the second-highest number of programs rated as the best in their field. Specifically, Berkeley received four top rankings in the field of Public Health: #1 for Epidemiology, #6 for Environmental Health Sciences (top among Environmental Health Science programs), #6 for Health Services and Policy Analysis (2nd among Health Policy programs); and #35 for Biostatistics (tied for 13th among all Biostatistics programs).[3]